I blew my transmission two weeks ago, lost all foward gears then fluid spewed out of tailshaft/rear seal, and now I am looking for a replacment. my situation is I am building a prerunner type truck with long travel suspension on all four wheels and every part has been upgraded now, except the actual engine/transmission.

my question is on a 2001 f150 supercrew 2wd, 5.4l...what are my options for a plug n play unit, or even something with some minor work to make it work?

Also any good heavy duty rebuilds available for the 4r70?


I have been looking at the 4r100 or back to a 4r70 either of these would be built up to take some heavy abuse but can the 4r100 fit and work as far as electronics? and does anyone have information on the length of the 4r70 and 4r100

I know it's a lot of information to try and compile but I will be doing this work in the next month as soon as my transmission is done being used by my fabricator to mock up the rear suspension.

 

4R100 would be your best bet,,but ,,A very expensive upgrade!
I would go with the strongest built 4R70W you can find.

Phil

 

at this point I have made every part of this beast stronger, What would be the strongest 4r70 unit available?

and the other question is will the 4r100 fit and work(electronics, speed sensor)?
I seen it was used in lightnings but not my year supercrew. so if it fits what is entailed in the swap(does anyone here know?).

Just a run down on my truck HnM motorsports LT kit with custom upper and lower control arms and custom spindle, coilover's, bypass's and bumpstops in front. with 16 inches of well controlled wheel travel, 18" when I cut out the sheetmetal from the firewall foward.

Rear suspension is a custom set of deavers with king smoothbodies for shocks and fox bumpstops.

It is currently getting overhauled to mount new tube bumpers, a one piece fiberglass clip, cab cage to meet existing engine cage and maybe back to the bed cage.

Basic mods include a hypertech programmer, spintech 3 in exhaust, and K&N intake. pushing 37" A/T's on 17" rims.

 

The 4R70W is a good solid transmission that can take a lot of abuse when it's built properly. There was an article in the Ford Trucks publication from Muscle Mustangs and Fast Fords where one was put in a 4x4 truck that ended up over 600rwhp and it's still going strong.

Do yourself a favor on this and give Troyer Performance a call. They know someone that can hook you up with exactly what you need for your truck.

Darrin

 

thanks for the response I completely forgot about troyer in this category, I always thought of them as a performance co. but this helps out alot...I wish I had the budget for the monster box!

but I might buy a used trans and have it rebuilt by a master tech, with some of the upgraded parts. I am going to have to give them a call...Thanks Darrin.

 

The truck in that magazine article that I mentioned had been through 3 of the Monster box transmissions. The last one is the only one that I saw the guts of and in my opinion they should have done a lot more to it for what they charge. The transmission that is in it now is light years ahead of what was taken out of it.

One good thing I can say is that they did honor their warranty on those 3 transmissions. The customer was pissed because he didn't have a running truck for the better part of a year while it was all being sorted out, but they did honor their warranty and in his case they honored it often.

Obviously all of that really swayed my opinion of those transmissions. I am like most others out there and prefer as little down time as possible.

To be fair I have to tell you that the tune that was in the truck had a lot to do with tearing up the Monster box transmissions. Those first 3 transmissions just all flat broke immediately in the same way. They simply didn't have a chance with the parts that were in them when that tune did what it did. I can't tell you how they would have held up otherwise because the tune broke them before they had a chance to get real life testing. You have to make up your own mind what that tells you.

Also to be fair, the first transmission that was put into the truck for that article suffered some problems on the dyno. Speculation was rampant on the cause and at first the tune was blamed. Trouble was that it did something entirely different and didn't simply break like the others did. This problem was showing up on the dyno almost immediately. On this one the forward engagement was acting very strange but it was still working and was drivable. Initial testing was with a different tune from a different tuner in place and in trying to figure out what was going on the original tune was put back in as a test. With that tune installed the reason the others broke became immediately obvious on the first pull when it made an awful noise. When it was taken apart to determine what happened, it was found that the only true failure was from the builder of the transmission using a 'custom modified' forward clutch assembly supplied by another company. The transmission builder took those parts out, replaced them with his own stuff and everything is still working as far as I know.

To prove a point, after the forward clutch assembly was replaced, the truck was tested with the 'bad' tune on the road and it didn't break or burn up. It sounded awful when it did what the tune commanded it to, but it held together. Everything was then taken apart and inspected again and no damage was found.

A hard lesson was learned on that project for everyone. If that faulty forward clutch assemly wouldn't have been there then the transmission would have made a god awful noise and lived. The problem in the tune could have then been found and fixed and everything would have gone forward smoothly. That isn't speculation becase, again, in final testing it took that abuse and didn't break where the others simply gave it up. The others broke so fast that they didn't give enough indication of what actually happened.

I know it's a long story, but there are several points to it.

First, you don't always get what you pay for. If the original transmissions had been built strong enough then the problem with the tune would have shown itself without destroying the transmissions and leaving the truck out of commission for almost a year and a pissed customer.

Second, for the love of God get a good tune. A bad tune can cost you in ways that you might never expect.

Lastly, everyone makes mistakes. The difference is in how things are handled when those mistakes happen. The company that built those first three transmissions may have supplied a product that is possibly less than what could be expected for the price, but mistake or not they stood behind their product exactly as promised. No reason or solution to the problem was provided and they didn't improve the product based on anything that was exposed as a potential weakness, but they honored their warranty even when maybe they didn't have to. When the builder of the last transmission made a mistake in trusting a new product where he shouldn't that resulted in a failure of his product, he did all that he could to take care of his customer and provided the product he had promised that would take the abuse that was expected of it. The difference there is that he took the time and did the work to determine exactly what happened and then provided tested solutions to prevent any of it from happening again.

Not everyone can build these things and make them hold up, but Mike Troyer is a great link to one of the places that can. When you are looking for products that you can trust you have to find a place that understands how it all works together and I can't think of a better guy to talk to about this stuff.

Darrin

 

Thanks again Darrin, good advice here. I am going to have to give him a call and speak with him about upgrades. appreciate the info.